


Doctor After Dark #3 - Many Happy Returns

by UglyWettieWrites



Series: Doctor After Dark [3]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005), Tenth Doctor - Fandom
Genre: Action/Adventure, F/M, Great Balls of Sexfire, Science Fiction, Sex in a TARDIS, TARDIS Rooms, TARDIS is the wingthing, Telepathic Sex, Timelord Sex, alternative uses of Venusian Love Ice, using the Ood as psychic magnifiers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-05
Updated: 2017-02-05
Packaged: 2018-09-22 03:32:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9580928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UglyWettieWrites/pseuds/UglyWettieWrites
Summary: The Doctor, depressed after the loss of Violet, stumbles into a beautiful surprise after nearly a year of mourning on his own.





	

Even after 9 regenerations and being surrounded by the certainty of death, he could not grow accustomed to it.

Violet was gone. It's been nearly a year, but a certain turn of phrase or a smell would tick off the memories in his blood and it took everything he had not to shiver with sorrow. After his Rose, and the valiant Martha, perhaps part of him wanted to believe that this time it might go right - that he might be able to anneal himself to touch the flame.

“Touch the flame.” Ha! It was her who touched him, and burned through 9 centuries of defenses built up through suffering and loss and Time Lord logic.

These were the moments he wished he could sleep as his companions did. How many times had he watched as humans passed out into a merciful stupor, regardless of the circumstances? Their bodies shut down, their brain waves dropping to a lower wavelength. They regenerated every night. How odd they thought themselves simple compared to the Time Lord race.

Rose healed him. Martha saved him. Donna centered him. But what of Violet? Where did she fit in?

He got tired of pacing in the console room. His eyes ached from looking at the screen. Gallifreyan flashed on the screen faster than a human eye could discern.

**Doctor, what's all this about? It's the most beautiful nonsense.**

He turned so fast his sonic screwdriver flew out of his pocket and slammed against the wall. Her voice echoed crystal clearly in the space. He put his hand over his mouth, stifling a scream. Lord of time and space, yet time had stopped for him. He promised himself to let the wound heal before moving forward, if not only for himself, for anyone else he touched.

The screwdriver let out a high pitched sound. He picked it up, looking for damage, but it was the same old tool as ever.

**Say Doctor, is it weird I want to touch your screwdriver? Is it, like, you know...personal?**

Her laugh, profane and sweet, flooded the console room.

“Enough!” He slammed his hands on the console, and it faded to nothing. “Shut up. Just shut up.” The TARDIS hummed on, but he felt the hairs on his arms stand on end. Something had changed. He went out into the hallway and saw the familiar walkway was open again.

Violet's quarters.

Around and down he went. This time, it was a wooden door, a strange sight in the TARDIS, but it was hers. It opened without a sound, and her scent made him cough once, a precursor to a sob. He had never been there – none of his previous regenerations ever visited the quarters of their companions while they lived in them. It was an unwritten rule, just like his human companions could not fathom one millionth of the sentient technology in which they were sheltered.

The door closed behind him. Her circular bed was unmade. He sat on it, caressed the unlikely sheets. She was so brazen he imagined she slept in satin, but it was cotton. Soft Clafassian cotton, silkier than silk in texture but breathable, crisp white printed with tiny lavender blooms. He clicked the bones in his thumbs to calm himself, but in the end he sank back and wrapped himself in them, taking deep breaths. Soon, the cotton was damp and hot on his face.

Yes, he cried. He had done a lot of crying in the beginning of his life. But rarely in front of a human.

He sat up, her duvet still over his head like a shawl. Her favorite sweater hung on the back of her vanity chair, black silk with little white pearl buttons. He pulled out the chair and sat down. The oval mirror reflected pinched misery back to him. He looked closer, his nose almost touching the glass.

It was uncanny. His current regeneration was a doppelgänger for who he had once been before the Time War. Before the loss and despair. Back when he only thought of learning, and love. He traced his own eyebrow, squinted at his own eyes.

Brown. His true brown.

He frowned and tipped the mirror up. His reflection disappeared. There were various pots of colored cream and powder and brushes on the vanity, the paraphernalia of femininity. He picked up a fluffy brush and studied it. There were still remnants of opalescent gold on it – the same gold that shone from her eyelids. He smelled it.

Nothing.

He noticed that the vanity mirror had a knob on it. He opened it and a small river of multicolored pearls fell to the desk. His lip trembled. Violet's pearls.

Ever since he found out she loved pearls, he had taken every opportunity to seek out and give her pearls from oysters all over the universe. Strange how those scaly bivalves are so ubiquitous, but all the better for her. He took a string on sunset-colored Velurian pearls from the pile. He had gifted them to her on their one year anniversary of traveling together. He pressed them to his face, and they clicked on his teeth.

 

 

> “Not only are these pearls a gorgeous nacreous orange – my favorite color - but they possess another brilliant property.” He put them around her neck. She turned to smile at him, but her eyes widened.
> 
> “They're warm, Doctor! Almost hot!” She ran to look at her reflection in a small mirror she hung in the console room. The beautiful glossy globes gave off a heat haze that warmed, but did not burn.
> 
> “Veluria is a planet covered in boiling seas and ever-erupting volcanoes. Not terribly hospitable for us, but the natives have a thick skin.” He typed something into the console, and an image of a Velurian came up.
> 
> Her hand went to her mouth. “They look like-”
> 
> “Dragons. The kind who used to inhabit Earth once, but they've evolved since then. Gotten smaller. Smarter. And they can speak. Monstrous good fun, Veluranese is.”
> 
> “Doctor, I'm surprised at you. Dragons are mythical creatures in storybooks. You should know better than me.”
> 
> His eyebrow rose. “I should. And I do.”
> 
> She looked at the screen again, still fingering the warm pearls on her neck. He could hear her brain working and counted down.
> 
> _Three. Two. One-_
> 
> “What do you mean, evolved? From dragons? Are Velurians from Earth? How'd they got from Earth to Veluria?”
> 
> His immense, toothy grin made her elbow him. He tipped into her and shrugged. “I might've done some time traveling, helped a certain place with a certain scaly firebreath problem and deposited said problem in a place where it would cease to be so. Everyone's laughing.”
> 
> “You're a magic man,” she said. She sucked on a pearl, still fascinated at its heat. “Absolutely magic.”

 

When he came to, he realized he sucked on a pearl – the same pearl, by the flavor. Just one kiss and he knew what she tasted like. He noticed a small black box amongst the pearls. There was a small space inside – whatever belonged inside was missing. He raised his head, listening. The TARDIS was moving.

“What are you doing?” he yelled at the machine. “I explicitly ordered complete stasis until further notice. I don't have any desire to-”

_Doctor. My darling doctor-_

Her voice, in his head. His blood hummed with it.

“What is this?” He spoke to the TARDIS.

 _My magic man,_ she said. _You found it. Just in time._

“I'm going mad. The Master has his drums, and I have my Violet. It's over.” He ran his fingers through his hair, making it a nest of spikes.

“You're not mad, Doctor. I'm just clever,” Violet said, walking into the room. He fell on his ass, and cursed in Gallifreyan. “Violet?” He stood up and ran to her – and through her. It was a projection. Her image flickered, then she turned to face him.

“Stop it. This instant. Why must you torture me?” He banged the wall of the TARDIS. “Leave me be!”

“Don't be so harsh on the old girl. It wasn't her idea.” She laughed her miraculous laugh.

“How?”

“Very simple, Doctor. A gift. But maybe you're right. It's mad.”

He put his hand through the projection again. He knew _he_ could tweak the systems to do such a thing, but how had she figured it out?

“The TARDIS spoke to me just as soon as the idea formed in my head. She told me how.”

She could read his mind, to a degree, or project thoughts into it. How easily he'd forgotten. Is that what made her special? Maybe. She was human, but just a bit more.

He studied her projection. She was perfectly still, something that she was incapable of being in life. She was a fidgeter – biting a nail tugging on her hair or jiggling a band-aided knee as she sat on the jumpseat, saying silly things to make him laugh. Her hair moved gently, as if she faced a soft breeze. Worst part? He couldn't smell her.

“I don't like this. At all.”

“I figured you wouldn't. Grumpy Doctor,” she said. In seconds, the scent of her rose from the floor. “Better now? Far less clinical this way. Time Lords and their noses,” she giggled again. Another crack yawned open on his hearts. Her pheromones, mixed with the perfume she bought on their last vacation.

“Where are we going?” He knew her. He had a vague idea.

“Your eyes, Doctor, they give you away. I think you know where.”

He stared at the image of her face. He was loathe to run. He didn't want to lose sight of her.

“Go on. I'll be here when you get back.”

His beat up shoes clanged on the metal gangplank to the door. He busted through, and into fine sand that swallowed his feet to the ankle. The sinking suns set the sky ablaze in shades of pink, blue, and lavender. The ocean fizzed on the orange cream wet sand.

Florana.

The beach was empty for miles, a phenomenon for that pleasure planet. He looked behind the TARDIS. There was a sprawling mansion, surrounded by a field of wildflowers. The house looked empty. The wildflowers released a perfume that made him want to weep. It was her smell, but uncut by her umami pheromones.

Someone approached from the mansion, and he ran back inside. He didn't feel like speaking to anyone. Or be yelled at by anyone.

“Doctor. Go back outside.” He wanted to shake his head no, but she moved toward him. “Please. I promise, it will be painless.” Her projection pointed at the door. He took a deep breath and stepped out again.

An Ood patiently waited between the TARDIS and the ocean.

The globe in its hand glowed. “So pleased to see you've come. Happy birthday, Doctor.”

“Happy...birth…?” His eyebrow rose. Ever since he began his travels, he didn't really pay attention to his age. After a quick mental inventory, he nodded at the Ood. It was right. He gave it a big smile.

“Is that your owner's mansion?” he asked, gesticulating toward the house. “If so, please inform them that-”

The Ood, in an act of extraordinary cheek, cut him off. “I do not have an owner anymore, Doctor. I am free to live and sing with my people.”

“Oh. I apologize most sincerely,” he said, giving him the slightest of bows. “I suppose Oods have a right to holiday too, eh? What d'you make of Florana? Beautiful place, this,” he said.

“Lovely, Doctor, but we are not here for a holiday. We were waiting.”

He kicked off his shoes, tied the laces together and threw them over his shoulder. “Do tell. For what?” He folded up his pant legs to his knees.

“For you.”

“For why?” he asked, walking past the Ood to the waves. He sighed as the water bubbled between his toes. He grinned as the tiny bubbles in the water glowed a luminescent green with every movement. Night swimming on Florana. It was unique.

“Because the Violet asked us to do so.”

His neck snapped up. “And how did the Violet do that?”

“She sang to us,” it said. Although he could not see, he felt it was smiling.

He could hear their song, but Violet was a human. She couldn't possibly, could she?

“She sang to us of deepest love, and sacrifice,” it said. “Such a sad, sad, song.”

“I'm not as sad as that,” he said, pulling at his jacket cuffs.

“It wasn't about you, Doctor,” the Ood said.

“Alright then.”

The Ood walked nearer to the water. “When we met the Violet, she had already made up her mind on how she wished to live the remainder of her life.”

He thought back on the first and only time they visited Florana. It was just several months after she'd stepped into his TARDIS and damn near taken over it. Six months, at most. She loved him then? He paced. She spent most of that vacation disappeared, flirting with a Venusian ambassador.

Oh, he remembered _that_ clearly. He had boiled about it for weeks afterward - even more so because of the mysterious smiles she gave him whenever he asked about what she'd been doing with the 3m tall stranger. The thought of his hands, silver skinned and eight fingered, caressing _his_ skin…

Caressing _her_ skin. He rubbed at his eyes.

“Good Doctor, it's time. Please re-enter the TARDIS. The Violet is waiting.”

“Good Mr. Ood,” he said, “The Violet is dead.” He kicked at the water. It lit up the air around him.

The Ood's globe clicked to darkness, then back on. “But is she gone?”

“After years of slavery, who would've thunk you lot were so smart-mouthed.” He eyed the tentacles over where most upright biped's mouths would be. “Well. Just...smart.” He stepped out of the water and shook his legs. He patted the Ood's shoulder. “Thanks for the birthday wishes, anyway.”

“Many happy returns,” it said. Its globe clicked off, but it did not move.

He walked back inside, but did not see the projection. His hearts dropped. Was that it? A trip to Florana to painful memories and being sassed by an Ood? He failed to see the good humor in it.

**Grouchy Doctor. Come to me. Quick.**

Her voice had a breathlessness that made his body react. He walked to the hall, then resisted the urge to run. He pointed the sonic screwdriver at the threshold of the passageway. His tongue touched the roof of his mouth with concentration.

 _You are staying_ _ **open**_ _this time,_ he thought. He froze it until he was satisfied the TARDIS would not hide her quarters from him again. It was his home. If he wanted to visit her rooms once in a while until the pain of her loss faded, he would. As many times as he wanted to.

He ran into her room. Her projection stood by the bed. She was nude, except for a pendant around her neck. He walked to her and tried to touch. His hand went right through where her heart would be.

“My Doctor,” she said. “Happy birthday.”

He sat on the bed again. Floranian sand drifted down from his ankles to the lambswool carpet on her floor.

Her projection walked in front of him. Her hand glowed over his, imparting the slightest warmth. “I have a gift.”

“Smart-mouthed Oods?”

She laughed. He gasped. It sounded ... fuller. Richer. Realer.

“Ah. I knew they would not fail me. It's begun.” She danced around. Her image jumped, as if she moved too fast for the TARDIS to project smoothly.

“They? Who?” he walked around her. She gave off warmth, like the Velurian pearls. A heat haze came off her image.

“My good friends the Oods,” she said. Again, his hairs began to stand on end. “Do you feel it?” Her skin was beaded with sweat, her nipples swollen with excitement.

“Feel what?” He took off his jacket and loosened his tie. Sweat made his scalp itch. Her nakedness must be affecting him. Tease.

“Listen, Doctor. Listen closely.”

First, his own heartbeats. A click as he swallowed. The inner workings of the TARDIS, humming… _humming_. Music, very far away. Beautiful. He honed in on it.

“Is that yours?”

“No. It's for you. All for you.”

It swelled to full volume. Ood song. Layer upon layer of harmonies, reflecting centuries of unexpressed beauty.

“I saw only one outside, but it sounds like hundreds of them.”

She smiled. “One thousand, to be exact.” He was about to sprint outside, but she grabbed his arm. His eyes rolled down to her fevered grip.

“Violet?” Gold traced his veins and traveled quickly to where she touched, and into her. His regeneration energy, mixed with her stardust, which had lain dormant in his blood since her death. That, mixed with the telepathy of a thousand Oods, produced just the right amount of energy to bring her back to him.

He touched her. More energy flowed into her image, solidifying her. She closed her eyes, taking a deep breath. He touched her lips, put his finger in her mouth and came back with a fingertip shiny with her saliva.

She hugged, and the precious weight of her bowed him.

“Doctor!” His closed eyes leaked tears. He kissed her hair, her face, then finally her mouth. She was hot and alive once more - he felt her heartbeat against him.

“How long?” He said into her mouth, refusing to stop kissing her.

“For one song,” she said. Her hands were in his hair. “Just one more song.”

“You clever, clever girl,” he said. His skin heated enough to make his shirt hiss and pop. Black burn holes bloomed on the pale blue fabric. She tore it away and kissed his chest over his hearts, but he grabbed her by the hair and kissed her again, eager for the plum tartness of her.

“You heat up so quickly,” she said, tearing away his smoking pants.

“So I've been told.” He licked the salty sweat from the crook of her neck. “I heat up quick but burn deliciously slow,” he said in Gallifreyan. Memories of home made his chest contract. Home and love, his way.

She wrapped her legs around him and they began to spin slowly a few meters above the floor. “You'll find I don't burn easily anymore, so sizzle away.”

Her lifeline, diaphanous and sparse, swirled from his and around it like ivy. Since she was in his blood, she borrowed from his. And it was completely worth it.  

“How long is the song?” His hardness burned against her belly, but he didn't want to be in her just yet.

“As long is it needs to be,” she said, squeezing his bum.

“But...how?” he said.

“The ambassador, on whose property we now sit. I found out quickly he has a fascination for human females, and is very amenable to requests.” She kissed down the line of his body. His belly tightened with the heat of her lips. She squeezed him, making him sigh, but his mind still clicked away too quickly.

“So you and the Venusian were...you know, together? You were gone overnight.”

She giggled into his flesh, a sensation that made his eyes roll closed. The superheated ring of her lips clamped tight around him. Her tongue danced on the underside of him. His hand turned to a fist in her hair. His glowing sex reflected orange against her hollowed cheek. She sucked until he bucked into her mouth.

“You taste of your favorite color. Of elderflowers,” she said, stroking his saliva slippery sex. “Delicious.”

“Did you have sex with the ambassador?” He insisted.

“Jealous, Doctor?” she said, moving so her sex hovered just centimeters from his pouting mouth. “You said I could do whatever I wanted on this planet. And I did. I told him a story.”

“Just a story, then?” he said. Her scent burned right through his frustration. He didn't taste her last time – he was too eager. He dug his fingers into her bum and pressed her to his mouth. She arched, then she took him in her mouth again, moaning into him as his tongue danced in her folds, faster than any human man could ever muster. It was a million times more delicious than a vibrator. He popped out of her moaning mouth, leaving an evaporating thread of saliva.

“What story?” He put three fingers inside her and then sucked them, as if there was deeper sweetness where his tongue couldn't reach.

“I told him...” she licked around the tip of him, “...about a lonely star man that I saw in my dreams,” she said. “The sparrows told me he'd come to get me and show me the universe. And he did.”

He turned her, pulled her around to face her. “And?”

“The story is sad, but short,” she said, kissing him. His skin was getting wet stone glossy. He hugged her hard, burying his face in her chest. He breathed her in. Her heart, it echoed his. “I fell in love, and believe he loved me, but my body, it was far too fragile a thing hold it all in...”

He squeezed her hips with a force that might've cracked a human woman's, but even if only for that night, she was reinforced to Time Lady levels by the infusion of his own blood. She was, truly, his Violet.

“You are mad,” he said. “A beautiful madwoman.” He smiled wide, joyful, panting. Such excitement would made a human woman evaporate into mist. Violet was pressed against him, whole and vibrating even faster than him.

“And he lent me his library, and the ear of his friends.” She bit his lip, then kissed him with a passion that made his hearts glow through his skin.

“You sang to the Oods?”

“Yes. It was a privilege. So impressed was the ambassador with my song, that he gave me a gift. For us. For this night, if it ever happened.” She plucked the pendant from around her neck. It looked to be what was in the little black jewelry box in her vanity.

“A jewel?” he said, rubbing his mouth on her breasts. As their mutual arousal grew, she seemed to grow stronger. Her lifeline, solitary like his, wove around his with increasing power. “How naff.”

“Not naff. And far more precious than a jewel,” she said between moans. They vibrated so fast they were beginning to blur together. Soon, they would be joined. She put the swirled blue green stone on her tongue. The silver chain holding fell to the floor. She kissed him, her tongue working the liquid deep down his throat. It was cold and flavorless. Water. It had not been a stone, but ice. Her hand moved down the line of her back, and she pressed her forehead against his. The intensity of Time Lord pleasure made her moan as if in pain. He didn't have much time, for just as soon as they joined, coherent thought would be obliterated.

He swallowed willingly but wondered. Why would the ambassador give her ice? It was an odd gift. Perhaps to cool her ardor?

 _It would take much more than an ice chip to do that. You think too much, darling._ They were fully telepathic now. He slid easily into her mind. She bucked in his arms, her face alight with the intimacy of it. At first the images were random – her plucking on the strings of a Stradivarius. Crunching on a nuclear lime shave ice.

 _Mmmm_ she thought. _Mmmm_ he echoed.

Straddling a running tub faucet, with warm water flowing just right between her legs.

 _You're naughty_ , he thought. _You're holding back_ , she replied.

He went deeper. Swirling motes of orange over a fire, flowing to an orange of a sunrise. Hands on her body, cold giving way to warmth. Silver. A soft voice, and song.

He hissed. The ambassador.

_Keep digging, my beauty._

Dust and wood pulp. Ink, the soft swish of pages turning. An eight fingered hand, heavy on her shoulder. A library. Tears plopping on pages. Whispers in Venusian, untranslated by the TARDIS but still understood in the soul.

Her breath hitched. A tear leaked from her closed eye and floated in front of his face.

Ood hands, drying her tears. More whispers – first it, then her. Her hands clutching at the Ood's jumpsuit.

 

 

> “It's not my fault. I just...felt it. I didn't mean to steal.” He was there, in her memory.
> 
> The ambassador stood by the doorway, listening quietly. The Ood did not have a glowing orb – he communicated directly to her mind with a touch to her temple.
> 
> _You haven't stolen a thing._
> 
> _But I don't think he knows I'm in so deep._ Her brow furrowed, and tears dripped down her chin. _I refuse to take what has not been offered explicitly to me._
> 
> _Time Lords are very very good at hiding things. If you saw it, it's because he wished you could see it._
> 
> _Do Time Lords wish?_
> 
> “All the time. They love and they lose, just as you do,” the Venusian said out loud. His voice was stringed music.
> 
> “I stand to lose much more than he does, don't you think?” she said. “I don't care. He's worth it.” She stood and walked to the fire crackling nearby, extending her hand. Almost immediately, she pulled it back, sucking on her reddened fingertips. “But how can I, when I can't even withstand this fire?”
> 
> “There is a way, but there's no coming back from it. Not for your fragile flesh,” the ambassador said. “Although it would be shame for a specimen like yourself to willingly burn out so spectacularly for that rumpled fugitive.” He curled a dark tendril of her hair in his long silver finger.
> 
> “What?”
> 
> “Nothing, pet.” She couldn't read into his layers of thought.  He dropped a massive book on the table, almost as thick as her waist. “This book ought to outline the nuances of interspecies copulation for most of the known universe. Some pleasant, some not. Chapter 1657 is quite illuminating, so I hear,” he said. “I'll be in my study if you have any questions.”
> 
> The Ood looked on as she perused the index. The chapter the ambassador mentioned spoke of the Venusian race – of magic waters that would weave into her cellular structure and banish all thought but pleasure. She smiled and kept looking.
> 
> Gallifreyan sex. It was nearly in the back of the book. She needed the Ood's help to shift the pages.
> 
> Her finger moved quickly over the script. Time lines. Telepathy. Levels of jointhood, starting at what equated to human coitus and intensifying to superheated tissue breakdown/reassembly, with molecular mixing. Fireproof bedchambers. Supernovas? She bit her lip.
> 
> No wonder the Doctor had hesitated touching the others. Without mutual telepathy, it would've never gone further than foreplay for him. Her heart ached for Rose, and Martha. But it burned for him.
> 
> _You know what you must do._
> 
> She nodded. _Should I tell him? Let him know that I know?_
> 
> _If you feel it's right._ The Ood smiled at her. What a loving race. She caressed its face. The tentacles were dry and soft. She felt its pleasure at the contact.
> 
> _Can you keep a secret?_ She looked around for the ambassador. _Can the ambassador hear us?_
> 
> _His range is very limited. He in on another floor, so no._
> 
> _But the other Oods can hear us?_
> 
> Y _es. I hear, so they hear. We are connected. And we can keep secrets. For centuries, it was_ _our_ _most important task_ _. Although we no longer have a master, we can still choose to serve. In this, we will serve you willingly, the Violet._
> 
> She kissed it between its eyes and whispered something in its ear, spoke it out loud although she didn't have to. It was a hallowed thing.

A hallowed thing. The faint echo of it made him quicken in her arms.

_Violet…_

_Listen closely_ , she thought. He felt her all around him, surrounding him. His cells touched her cells. Every collision was pleasure, and there were millions happening every second.

The Ood song intensified in his thoughts. She blew like a soft breeze around his burning hearts, which were now exposed completely. They were beyond the body.

They sang the hallowed word she whispered to them that night he'd spent furious at her for her selfish disappearance - his best-kept secret.

His name.

His cells hummed to velocity. He let her feel the full force of his desire. They danced in the spaces around each other, mixing, pulsing into a gilded fog of pure pleasure. Her thoughts were his thoughts, and his history was laid bare to her. She truly knew all, and understood. More importantly, because she understood, she forgave. Her single heart burned as his two did, and they began to beat together, faster and faster, at the same pace as the Ood song. The Ood reflected and multiplied what they felt until they roared into a ball of pale blue flame.

His name, whispered with heartwrenching tenderness in her thoughts, but growing louder, a relentless repetition, a quickening thrust.

Metal groaned. Wood exploded. Pearls popped like corn – all except the Velurian pearls.

She wrapped his DNA round her finger, stretched and read it like poetry.  He uncurled hers like a scroll and sung it back to her.

This is what you are made of. And it is sacred to me.

 **How long will you keep me?** She knew the joining poem. She had studied it well.

 **As long as I take breath, my lady.**   

 **And ever more?** she said. Her cells swirled to blue flame around him.

 **For ever more** , he finished, splitting into a tongue of deepest orange fire. They danced around each other, faster and faster, ever widening, until they exploded into pure energy that made the thousand Oods holding hands and surrounding the TARDIS fall back, dazed and panting.

They lay like that for a while, recuperating thought, then stood slowly, gathering themselves. They wiped the sand from their clothes and walked to the ambassador's mansion in scattered groups. Some held hands. Some cried softly.

Violet lived on only in their memory, now.

* * *

 He came to with a gasp. He was naked, lying on the metal grating of a featureless room somewhere in the TARDIS.

“What the-” he rubbed his eyes, and noticed his glasses were missing. He groaned. He looked down at his bare body, squeezed his fists and wiggled his toes. He didn't remember what happened, but whatever it was, he felt amazing. Better than he had in a century. As he got up, he noticed something was stuck to his bare ass.

A string of Velurian pearls.

“Ooh. These are pretty,” he said, rolling them around his wrist and walking out. As he dressed, he saw something shine around his neck. A silver necklace. He pulled it off and studied it. It looked to be of Venusian origin by the ornate, miniscule links. He dressed quickly and decided he would visit New Earth and find out more about it. Perhaps he could hock it, get something interesting. The pearls he would keep.

They were his favorite color.

* * *

 The Reliquarian studied the chain with an old-fashioned watchmaker's loupe. “You're spot on, Doctor. It's Venusian. Purest silver, almost transparent. But where's the pendant?”

“Pendant? There's no pendant. Just the chain. What d'ye reckon? What can I get for it?”

The shopkeeper looked at him, all eight eyes squinted. “I could tell you it's worth that Huon detector on the shelf, but I would be lying. And I don't want to be caught lying to you.”

“Good man,” the Doctor said, slapping the creature's sloped back. “So what's it really worth?” He studied the detector. An interesting device indeed, and as a tantalizing plus, it would go **Ding!**

“There's nothing in here to equal its worth,” he said, sniffing it with its hairy proboscis. Its slim, sticky tongue licked the chain.

The Doctor snatched it away, his face twisted in disgust. “Don't do that.”

“Venusian love ice. Silly name, but very powerful. And extraordinarily rare.” He looked at the chain with undisguised interest.

“Venusian what?”

“Love ice. It's an aphrodisiac for Venusians, and so coveted by all other worlds it was nearly mined to extinction over 100 thousand years ago. It's strictly regulated now. Only Venusians can have it, and only in set circumstances. Breaking the rules means a visit from the Judoons. The Venusian PM doesn't muck about.”

“Right.” he said, putting the chain in his pocket. “And, pray tell, my snouted friend, how did you know how it tastes like?”

He gave the Doctor an enigmatic shrug. “I've read about it in books.”

“Tell me more about it. I know Venusians use water to copulate, but what makes the ice so special?”

“It intensifies sensation, but it has an additional property that was used by other civilizations that had nothing to do with joining,” the creature leaned closer, whispering. “It causes the creature who consumes it to forget.” Its black eyes were fathomless.

“To forget?” His eyebrow rose. “So, first there's pleasure, then poof! You don't remember a thing?”

It nodded solemnly at him. “You can imagine the uses such a substance can have beyond the recreational. Military uses. Espionage.”

“Okay,” the Doctor said, standing up. “Well, either way, all I found was the chain. Perhaps a previous regeneration got into something he didn't want me knowing about. Cheeky lad.” He winked at the Reliquarian. The Doctor put on sunglasses and adjusted his straw hat. The pearls peeked out from under his shirt cuff.

The creature's eyes suddenly twinkled with greed.“Are those Velurian pearls?” It pointed with its snout.

“These are mine, that's all you need worry yourself about,” he said. “Until later, good friend.”  

He walked out into the apple grass-scented air. 

“What a lovely, warm day,” he said, looking at the milling crowd of people in the interplanetary souk. “I wonder if there is a shave ice vendor. I'm gasping for a lime flavored one. Yum.” He tipped his hat at a passing cat person and disappeared into another shop.


End file.
